


Silence

by kiyala



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Fist Fights, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-04-05
Packaged: 2018-10-15 03:23:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10549240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiyala/pseuds/kiyala
Summary: Osamu stops talking when they're fourteen, just before they've graduated middle school.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nautilics](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nautilics/gifts).



> Slides in to post this before ch249 comes out, I've been thinking about silent!Osamu since I first saw his "…" so I wanted to write something about it.

Osamu stops talking when they're fourteen, just before they've graduated middle school. 

They're on their way home when they get into an argument. It's not out of the ordinary for them these days, or so they've been told by their parents, their teachers, by any adult who thinks that they will want to listen. It's impossible to be fourteen—they all say—to be developing a sense of self, and not want to fight with your twin. It doesn't mean the end of the world. Most of the arguments blow over just as quickly as they build up; snide remarks that turn into more heated jabs, until they yell at each other, releasing their anger enough to immediately forget about it and move on. 

This time, though, it's different. The argument builds steadily, with both of them throwing insults at each other until it doesn't feel like it's enough, and they resort to throwing punches instead. The street is quiet, and there's nobody to pull two resentful twins apart. They've both been in the volleyball club throughout middle school—constantly together, constantly compared—and it makes them an even match for each other. They're the same size, just as muscled as each other, just as quick. 

Osamu is the more hotheaded one, and it's his fist that meets Atsumu's face hard enough to make him stumble backwards. Osamu doesn't stop, stepping forward and grabbing Atsumu's collar with one hand, punching him again with the other. He throws his twin to the ground and lets his anger out in the only way he can. He knows, even as he's kneeling over Atsumu, that it's not his twin that he's angry at. It's never Atsumu who laughs and says that they're just like each other, it's never Atsumu who says that they're impossible to tell apart, but there's no one else here to direct the anger at, so Atsumu will just have to do. 

"I wish I never had a twin," Osamu spits, and it's not until he hears the hitch in Atsumu's breath that he realises that he's gone too far—not just with his words, but with everything. 

Atsumu lies on the ground beneath him, his face bruised, his lip split and bleeding, and Osamu scrambles backwards, looking down at his bruised knuckles, not entirely believing what he's just done.

He tries to pull Atsumu up, but they both end up stumbling back to the ground. Atsumu can't stand, not when he's too shaky to support his own weight, and so Osamu tries again, supporting him this time, holding him up and slowly walking them both home.

He doesn't say another word, as if it can make up for everything he wishes he'd never said.

It goes for a week, and Atsumu doesn't mention it even once. The volleyball team doesn't know what to do about it, but Atsumu steps in when Osamu needs to speak. It's like Atsumu can read his mind. His face isn't bruised any more, even if Osamu can still see the fading cut on his lip—the one that Atsumu licks idly sometimes when he's lost in thought—and it's painfully obvious to everyone that something has happened between them, but nobody knows how to approach that, either. Atsumu is good at deflecting, Osamu realises, his silence giving him the opportunity to stand back and observe instead. There's a charming quality to Atsumu's smile that works on people that don't know him as well as Osamu does. 

Their parents try to make Osamu talk, and it doesn't work. Atsumu speaks for him at home, too. He's realised that this is Osamu's choice and he tells their parents as much. It doesn't stop them from worrying, and it doesn't stop his mother from taking Osamu aside, telling him that she can find people for him to talk to, if that's what he needs. He shakes his head at her and eventually, she stops asking. 

Atsumu starts talking twice as much, to fill Osamu's silence. It makes Osamu guilty at first, until he realises that Atsumu enjoys it. There's no silence with Atsumu's jokes, his quips, the laughter that it earns, or the annoyed retorts. It's never silent any more and Osamu likes that; he doesn't say it, but he knows that Atsumu understands all the same. At the very least, he likes that much about having a twin. 

In the weeks between graduating middle school and beginning high school, Osamu hears his mother taking Atsumu aside.

"You'll be at a new school," he hears her say. "You'll be with new people. You can't speak for Osamu all the time." 

Osamu doesn't hear what Atsumu says in reply, just the reassuring timbre of his voice. He feels it reassure him too as he sits there in their shared room. 

It's how Atsumu finds him, a few minutes later. They look at each other, and it's all Atsumu needs to realise that Osamu has heard everything. 

"I don't mind," Atsumu tells him, sitting down beside him and pressing their shoulders together comfortingly. "I really don't, y'know? That day, when we fought, you carried me home. You did the walking for both of us. I don't mind doing the talking. You're the one who holds us up." 

Atsumu's wrong about that, Osamu thinks to himself. Atsumu has held him up far more. In the past few months, it's felt like Atsumu has pulled him up and pulled him through everything, without ever needing to be asked.

"I mean," Atsumu sighs. "There's just one thing. I kind of wish that the last thing you said wasn't—" 

Osamu thinks back, and his stomach goes cold with guilt. He wished he'd never had a twin. There's no silence in the world that could make up for just how much he didn't mean it then and would never mean it now. 

He clears his throat, leaning against Atsumu's shoulder. He feels his brother tense, head turning to watch him. His throat feels clogged with every word he's never said since he stopped speaking, but he forces the sound out all the same. The one word that matters to him the most.

"Atsumu."


End file.
